Dispensing medicine to an unwilling patient, more particularly to an infant, can be notoriously frustrating and oftentimes messy. The frustration occurs when the infant resists the administering of the medicine or refuses to ingest the medicine once administered. The mess results when the medicine is placed into the traditional utensils, such as a spoon or eyedropper, and when the unwilling infant spits the medicine from his mouth.
When an infant is still at the stage of being bottle fed, a spoon or eyedropper introduced into its mouth will be sensed as a foreign object, and subsequently, the infant often will seek to push the object away from or out of its mouth. Even if the infant has adjusted to a spoon or eyedropper, the unfamiliar taste of many medicines will still cause the infant to spit out the medicine once it has been administered. Furthermore, children's spoons and eye droppers are usually rigid, and in the case of a struggling infant, could possibly be dangerous to the baby's eyes, mouth or throat.
Along with the mess and frustration that comes from medicine which has been spilled or spit out by the infant, the more important question of proper dosage arises. With conventional methods, a certain amount of medicine may inherently be ingested before the infant refuses the remainder of the dosage. However, when the infant refuses a portion of the medicine, it becomes difficult to estimate or measure how much has been ingested, and therefore, how much medicine still needs to be given for a proper dosage. Not only is the obvious danger of later overdosage possible, there is also a risk of underdosage, making the medicine ineffective. An underdosage could be as significant as an overdosage if the medicine is critically needed by the infant.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide an apparatus to introduce medicine to an infant in a way so as to reduce the likelihood of the infant rejecting the medicine. Towards this end, such an apparatus would preferably be of a form which is familiar to the baby and which an infant would eagerly desire to take into its mouth. It is further desirable to provide an apparatus which would allow the dosage of medicine to be precisely measured and dispensed. Finally, the apparatus would preferably be of a blunt, soft, non-harmful form to allow the safe introduction of medicine should the baby be moving its head rapidly or flailing its arms.
Several prior efforts have dealt with the problem of dispensing medicine to infants by utilizing a conventional baby bottle assembly and have resulted in issued patents, such as, Krammer U.S. Pat. No. 2,680,441, Greenspan U.S. Pat. No. 2,786,769, Roskilly U.S. Pat. No. 4,821,895 and Roth et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,701. The devices of these prior patents have certain structural and functional disadvantages. The Krammer nursing bottle attachment includes an external syringe mounted on the side of the bottle. An infant can easily reach the syringe to dislodge it, spilling medicine and presenting a pointed object which may puncture the infant's face or mouth.
The Greenspan device is not intended for the dispensing of medicine. It includes only a center chamber for mixing a powdered formula with a liquid in the bottle. There is no way for medicine in the chamber to enter the infant's mouth other than through the mixture which may dilute sufficiently so as to make it ineffective.
The Roskilly device includes an awkward bottle lid attachment which has no separate discharge hole for the medicine and which has an accessible syringe which the infant can grab and dislodge thus spilling the medicine and reducing the dosage amount.
Finally, the Roth et al. device is merely a kit to attach a vial to conventionally sold nursing nipples and bottle assemblies. The kit dedicates the nipple to the medicinal contents of the vial and therefore does not solve the predominant problem of giving medicine to an infant, i.e., the unfamiliar taste and subsequent refusal by an infant to take the medicine.
Another object of this invention is to provide a medicine dispenser of minimal separate parts which may be lost or broken. The Krammer, Roskilly and Roth et al. devices utilize numerous separate pieces besides the conventional bottle and nipple. Consequently, the odds of losing or breaking one of the pieces of the assembly are increased which will render the complete assembly inoperable.